Friday 19 May 2017

ARE YOU A WATER BABY?

We asked readers to tell us how they felt about swimming... this is what they said!

Katie says:
I'm a real water baby, I love a dip now and then. I get the urge to be in the water from my father - he's a surfer who has won competitions! He takes me surfing and body boarding, teaches me safety and jumps into the waves with me. I love water parks - few things fill me with adrenaline as much as sliding down a water slide! Water itself gives me an energy I often forget I have. One minute I'm calmly floating on my back, the next I am splashing around!

Jo says:
I go to a training club on a Monday morning before school and also on a Thursday evening. I could go more, but I'm fifteen and school is quite intense right now, so I choose not to compete or train more than twice a week. I love swimming because it feels like nobody is judging me (even though lots of the club DO swim competitively and the coach likes to push us, at the end of the day, to me, it's just me doing my best.) I find it very relaxing after the stress of school, and also love the way it stretches and works my whole body.

Kym says:
I used to be in a swim club in my early teens. As I got older, I started body boarding, but I haven't done that in a while now, though I still have the board somewhere!

Francesca says:
I LOVE swimming. I go twice a week, for a one hour session and then for an hour and a half session. I also teach now, for an hour on Wednesdays, and swim competitively for the Nuneaton Dolphins. We have so much fun!

Cara says:
I am quite a strong swimmer and I go to the pool once a week for a club with people of all ages. It's mainly a fun thing but the aim is to improve your stroke and style, and I started going as I wanted to learn how to put my head underwater when doing front crawl and breast stroke. I learned that and in the process I got the swimming bug! I like it because even when the pool is busy it often feels like it's just you swimming, if that makes any sense!

Violet says:
I haven't been near a pool in years, but I used to go swimming once a week. I don't want to swim competitively or anything but I want to swim for me, and I want to swim well. My mum was a very good swimmer when she was younger, so maybe she's passed that ability on - I have to be good at something, right? It's great exercise for the whole body as well as being relatively easy as the water supports your weight. Maybe it's just me, as I have to take my hearing aids out to get in the water, but I find swimming a very calm and quiet experience. I can't be distracted by conversation or music, everything is echoey and muffled. It can be quite meditative!

Angela says:
I love swimming but hate public pools - strip lights and chlorine and wriggling out of a wet costume in a tiny cubicle. I like to swim in the sea, I love the taste of salt on my lips and the way the water lifts you with the tide. There is an outdoor lido where I live too, and though it's not heated it's great to swim in on a hot day.

Fab illustrations by the very talented Helen Swan - thank you Helen!

Cathy says:
I love this! Swimming is my favourite kind of exercise, and I dream of living near a pool so I could go more often! Do YOU love to swim - or hate it? COMMENT BELOW to tell us more!

1 comment:

  1. I hate to swim in full tight deep public pools cause in every direction you look ppl are showing off plus I CANNOT SWIM FOR MY LIFE!!!! don't make fun �� of me but I can only swim up to 5 meters

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